7 Studies That Only Proved That Scientists Are Perverts

Every scientist strives to be objective and logical, ignoring personal biases in the interest of discovery and the pursuit of knowledge. But sex is really neat, and even the scienciest of scientists can get lost in a hazy boner fog, with both purpose and method seeming to get forgotten entirely (if they were ever even there in the first place).

#7. Sex in an MRI Machine (And Women Flying Solo)

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The invention of MRI machines gave doctors the handy ability to look inside people, helping with everything from bone injuries to brain tumors to that silly ride at Epcot Center. However, the scientific community is apparently full of people who spent the entire run time of Innerspace hoping to see the interior workings of Martin Short ejaculating Dennis Quaid's spaceship into Meg Ryan.

impawards.com"But why would they put his O-face on the poster if it wasn't going to happen?"

So in 1999, four couples and three single women were recruited for a study. Once assembled, the participants were instructed to climb into the MRI machine (here known as the metal tube of judgment) and have sex with each other. The single women were tossed inside with a masturbation directive (and a wall calendar of shirtless firemen).

The Perverted Bit:

The experiment began with the couples engaging in "face to face coitus in the superior position" (which is sexless egghead speak for missionary). After the scientists had gotten enough dissected sex photos (dissexted?), they told the males to leave the machine and told the women to keep going by themselves, presumably to capture that extra edge needed for the medical journals.

Getty"Oh, so the same thing we do every night. But with magnets."

The lone women would diddle it up until they reached "the pre-orgasmic stage," at which point they would inform the scientists over an intercom (which while not in use for communication was presumably feeding in an endless stream of R. Kelly songs, such as "My Pony," "Bump and Grind" and "Gotham City"). After some pre-orgasmic images were taken, the women would resume diddling until climax, which the MRI machine would also record.

The researchers were not the kind of people who thought that this situation would make maintaining an erection difficult, and as such "did not foresee" that sex in a sterile metal tube surrounded by a makeshift curtain and a room full of scientists would be a major boner slayer for nearly every male involved. There was only one guy who had no problems, and the scientists chalked this up to his "artistic commitment" to the project; he and his partner were both a) involved in and dedicated to the experiment from day one and b) amateur street acrobats and therefore "trained and used to performing under stress." So if nothing else, we already know that this experiment will answer most unanswered questions in the field of Amateur Street Gymnasts Who Like to Fuck in Metal Tubes.

Truly an underappreciated field of study.

The experiment's purpose is only ever vaguely described, and never really goes beyond "We want to see what it looks like when we make people have sex in an MRI machine." Their findings are always along the lines of "People don't seem to like having sex in MRI machines, except, again, unlicensed street acrobats." As stated in this video (which begins with the most amazing non sequitur in the history of the world), the experiment was of interest to specialists and "laypersons with an interest in reproductive anatomy" (read: the Internet).

#6. Johann Wilhelm Ritter and His Battery

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The invention of the world's first electric battery, the voltaic pile, in 1800 was a monumentally historic event. For the first time, people had captured electricity and were free to study its effects and potential. One of those people was Johann Wilhelm Ritter. However, rather than using it to invent something awesome, such as the light bulb, Ritter used the voltaic pile to apply current to sensitive areas of his body, including his nasal cavity, tongue and eyes, because that was evidently the absolute best idea he could come up with. Clearly, programming Karnov 187 years early would have been the superior idea.

He wrapped his dong up in "a cloth moistened with lukewarm milk" (you know, because), then touched a charged wire from the battery onto the cloth. After a bit of a jolt, his penis started to swell. Rather than hurling the cloth out of the window for fear of penile explosion, he kept it firmly applied until he experienced the most terrifying orgasm of all time (we're calling shotgun on that premise so we can pitch it to Stephen King).

We'd call it a page-turner, but honestly, most of them are stuck together.

Showing all the measured reserve of a 10-year-old boy discovering nudity, Ritter began frequently zapping himself, going so far as to jokingly write to his publisher that he intended to marry the voltaic pile (given what we've just learned, we are in no way surprised that actual women were less than excited to have sex with him).

After a while, Ritter began experiencing some nasty side effects, including muscle spasms and paralysis, all over his body (his boner, while arguably his favorite place to electrocute, was by no means the only area of his anatomy that he attached to the battery). Rather than discontinue his "experiments," which by this point seemed to have no higher academic pursuit beyond trying to turn himself into a Spider-Man villain, Ritter would self-medicate with opium to keep the discomfort at bay, leaving him free to play with his masturbattery until the end of time. Or at least until he died at 33 from tuberculosis augmented by a deteriorating physical frailty, which a regime of drug use and constant electric shocks certainly did nothing to help.

Moral: No good comes from being the porn parody version of Electro (Erectro?).

#5. Whipping Buttocks

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Endorphins are the body's natural opiates, flooding your system with that natural high you experience when you exercise, have an orgasm and fall in love. They work on the same place in the brain as heroin and morphine without all that Trainspotting bullshit. Endorphins are also released in a big dose after you experience something painful like stubbing your toe or pulling a muscle.

"That was the hottest car wreck I've had in days."

Seeking to do a study on the relationship between endorphins, depression and addiction, a group of Russian researchers gathered together all the available literature on each subject. They thoroughly reviewed this information and thought long and hard about the most appropriate research to do, taking careful note of all the different methods known to release endorphins we touched on above, and assembled a bunch of appropriately sad junkies to form their test group.

The Perverted Bit:

The researchers then heroically threw all of that stuff out and beat a load of depressed drug addicts on the ass with canes. The idea behind the literal ass beatings was to release the body's endorphins, acting as a natural medication for those suffering from depression and addiction and various other diseases.

Getty"That's it, flog my tumors away!"

The researchers claim that they had excellent results, recommending 30 sessions of 60 cane strikes to the butt cheeks, because getting whipped on your naked ass in a Russian lab is nothing if not pure science. According to one of the ladies who dispensed the canings, "At first they didn't like it, but when they started to feel the benefits they kept asking for more."

#4. Kinsey and Team Get Freaky

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Alfred Kinsey was the first major sexologist in America and did some pretty groundbreaking work, including being portrayed in a movie by Liam Neeson. He began his career researching insects, but soon realized that he would see many more naked breasts if he switched his field to sex. He taught what was called a "marriage course" by his employers at Indiana University, so named because they wanted to avoid generating controversy.

"Fine, if you want to be boring about it."

Kinsey began his research in 1938 by distributing sex surveys to his students, asking about things like their bedroom habits and partner preferences. He abandoned the surveys before too long and switched to one-on-one interviews, feeling that his students would be more honest in a face-to-face conversation. All the while, his superiors never bothered to question what might be the goal and/or purpose of his course beyond pure self-indulgence and boner-driven curiosity.

The Perverted Bit:

Kinsey had been seducing male graduate students since back during his entomology days, so it should come as no surprise that he would continue to do so in his new field of study (which conveniently centered entirely around having sex with everything in sexing distance).

One such person within sexing distance was a student named Clyde Martin, with whom Kinsey had conducted one of his face-to-face interviews. After the interview, Kinsey offered him a job as part of his research team. He then had sex with Martin, because that's research.

When Martin decided that he was more into girls than man-sex with his boss, he took stern and sensible action, a phrase which here means "He demanded to have sex with Kinsey's wife of 20 years." Kinsey was more than happy to oblige, because of his commitment to the pursuit of knowledge (see research, above).

As Kinsey's team grew, so did his wiener and its thirst for new hiding places. With encouragement from Kinsey, his team members had sex with him, each other, each other's spouses and anyone else they cared to invite along. Being an enterprising and forward-thinking academic, Kinsey hired a photographer to document all this research. The goal and subsequent conclusion of said research was shockingly never made entirely clear.